![Octandria Monog. [Pappea capensis] (1817) (Octandria Monog. [Pappea capensis] (1817)) - Drawings of plants collected at Cape Town](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/012-original.webp)
Octandria Monog. [Pappea capensis] (1817)
Octandria Monog. [Pappea capensis] (1817)
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- slightly upright 1.23 : 1
First Look
江馆清秋，晨起看竹，烟光日影露气，皆浮动于疏枝密叶之间。
—— 清·郑板桥《题画竹》
On an autumn morning at the river lodge I looked at the bamboo: mist, sunlight, dew, all drifting among the sparse and dense leaves.
Slightly taller than wide; the eye lands above centre. Then step in close: watch where colour meets line, and whether the line ever breaks. Third, find the darkest small patch: the whole tonal order is measured from there.
Name and Thing
No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. Neither name nor binomial survives: the printed title must do.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 11.2% of the sheet, foliage 2.1%, the cast yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. A botanical plate: one plant lifted from field or glasshouse and set at the centre of the sheet, root, stem, leaf, flower and fruit in turn, made legible, citable, transmissible.No colour group is recorded. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.
Composition
The sheet is slightly tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 16% of the sheet, centred near the centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
The first half of the nineteenth century moved from copper to steel to lithography; stipple could render the softest transition. Decide first whether it was printed or painted; only then discuss whether it is beautiful. If you mean to copy it: take its skeleton, its margins and the order of its colours; the burin's hatching is the language of copper — suggest it with pencil density, do not imitate it stroke for stroke.
Poetic Resonance
朝饮木兰之坠露兮，夕餐秋菊之落英。
—— 战国·屈原《离骚》
At dawn I drink the dew fallen from magnolia; at dusk I dine on the fallen petals of autumn chrysanthemum.
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the corolla becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
The symbolism of such a plate lies not in flower lore but in record: the belief that a plant deserves to be drawn accurately — the plainest ethic of the scientific age. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.
Season and Place
Plates usually record flowering, the fortnight when a plant is most identifiable. Various: local hillside or a plant brought from overseas. The nineteenth-century botanic garden and glasshouse were their first address away from home. The year 1817 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. See this kind of plate in the flowering season if you can: once you have met the living flower, you stop reading only colour.
The Book and the Hand
“Drawings of plants collected at Cape Town” carries only Clemenz Heinrich Wehdemann's name. From drawing to plate the sheet passed through several hands — the engraver aimed at accuracy, the colourist at speed, and between them lies each plate's unevenness.
What to Take Away
Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1817.
About this plate
Octandria Monog. [Pappea capensis] (1817) is plate 12, from Drawings of plants collected at Cape Town, drawn by Clemenz Heinrich Wehdemann. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: 1817-1820.
![Nymphaea coerulea [Nymphaea nouchali] (1817)](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/011-thumb.webp)
![Pavetta caffra [Pavetta lanceolata] (1817)](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/013-thumb.webp)
![Gardenia Nov. Sp. [Hyperacanthus amoenus] (1817)](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/002-thumb.webp)
![Gardenia Nova Sp. [Burchellia bubalina] (1817)](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/003-thumb.webp)
![Gloriosa [Gloriosa superba] (1817)](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/004-thumb.webp)
![Hexand. Mono. [Mimusops obovata] (1817)](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/005-thumb.webp)
![Hibiscus [Hibiscus calyphyllus] (1817)](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/006-thumb.webp)
![Icosandria monog. [Ochna arborea] (1817)](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/007-thumb.webp)
